{"id":209014,"date":"2012-08-27T12:06:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T17:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/?p=209014"},"modified":"2012-08-28T11:15:31","modified_gmt":"2012-08-28T16:15:31","slug":"coommish-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=209014","title":{"rendered":"Commissioners to Vote on Budget, Tax Rate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/?attachment_id=209022\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-209022\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2012\/08\/thumb_smithcounty-seal4.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"thumb_smithcounty-seal\" width=\"120\" height=\"120\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-209022\" \/><\/a>TYLER \u2014 Smith County commissioners plan to approve their 2012-2013 budget and tax rate at a meeting this morning. The meeting is set to kick off with a final public hearing on the budget and tax rate. County Judge Joel Baker filed a proposed 2013 budget that will decrease the tax rate while maintaining the same level of county services for citizens, according to a county news release. Baker credits careful financial management, conservative budgeting, and recent signs of economic growth over the past few years for the positive 2013 outlook.<\/p>\n<p>At least one citizen group, Grassroots America &#8211; We the People (GAWTP), is weighing in on the budget and tax rate.  According to a position statement directed at commissioners, &#8220;Grassroots America appreciates the fact that your budget is based on funding with the effective tax rate.&#8221;  The group does address four major issues.  Reiterating an issue raised last year, GAWTP recommends requiring the Budget Officer to post an itemized listing of all changes that cause the prior year\u2019s adopted budget line item totals to change.  GAWTP also says, &#8220;We see no information posted in the proposed budget that would tell taxpayers why you plan to hold almost $13 million in reserve.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>The citizen group additionally notes, &#8220;We see that Judge Baker has referenced a performance pay program in his executive letter for the budget. It sounds as if the criteria on which the department leaders will be evaluated has been set from the top&#8230;.A true performance pay plan must include full participation from the folks on the ground doing the work.&#8221; Finally, GAWTP says, &#8220;Smith County still has no long-range rural transportation plan to even begin proper budgetary planning for the upgrade of county roads. We urge the Commissioners Court to make this a top priority for the next fiscal year.&#8221;  The statement concludes, &#8220;We look forward to hearing back from the Commissioners Court on these four issues when you have the answers. We will be happy to publish your responses.  Thank you for serving.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TYLER \u2014 Smith County commissioners plan to approve their 2012-2013 budget and tax rate at a meeting this morning. The meeting is set to kick off with a final public hearing on the budget and tax rate. County Judge Joel Baker filed a proposed 2013 budget that will decrease the tax rate while maintaining the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=209014\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Commissioners to Vote on Budget, Tax Rate<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-03 11:57:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209014"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209221,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209014\/revisions\/209221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}